Hidden Among the Stars

by Melanie Dobson

  They’d locked the front door and handed the keys over to Sigmund, the year he’d turned twenty-three. Thirty years later, Sigmund gave the keys to his son.

  She and Hermann eventually parented four children—three sons and a daughter—and then added a grand to their parenting title for a total of six grandchildren along with an astonishing number of great-grandchildren and seven great-great-grandchildren in recent years, though one great was plenty for her. None of her tribe understood why she didn’t want to visit this place. All they saw was the beauty and mystique of the mountains and lake, while she . . . All she saw were the ghosts.

  For almost eighty years she’d faithfully paid rent for the graves above the lake, and no one had ever asked about Luzia or her story. Most Austrians were too afraid to talk about those lost years between 1938 and 1945, veiling them behind the black drapery of time. The power and strength of the Nazis clouded many a vision during that era, and a whole generation wished they’d made other choices.

  But admitting the wrongness took a heart humbled, crippled even, and many in this land, her included, chose a crutch instead of gambling between heartache and healing.

  So many times over the years, she wished that she could go back and stop the Gestapo before they took Annika away. Not that she regretted the life Annika had given her, not for one moment; it just wasn’t hers to live.

  She closed her eyes, remembering again the dance so long ago that she never should have danced. She should have run from Max, like she ran from Ernst in the park. If so, perhaps the woman who had truly loved him would be alive.

  It was much too late to change anything from the past now, but that woman—Callie, she’d said—she knew Luzia’s name.

  What else did she know?

  Her body may fail her, but her memory was still as sharp as one of the bevels used to carve a violin. She remembered most everything, including that conversation yesterday, but before her body gave way—or at least, that’s how Sigmund described her spell—she couldn’t remember if Callie told her where she’d heard about Luzia.

  And she desperately needed to remember.

  Her hand slipped instinctively down to her leg, tracing the faint scar that no one else could see. Some things she needed to remember, and others she’d spent a lifetime wishing she could forget.

  The strains of an orchestra stole into the library. Strauss and his “Village Swallows from Austria”—the waltz that she and Max had danced. She glanced around, thinking perhaps her mind was failing her after all, but she realized that Sigmund must be playing music in another room.

  And the melody of Strauss strengthened her.

  Her son had vague memories of the youth camp that had taken over the estate, but he didn’t remember the evil that ran rampant here before or during the war. He knew all about National Socialism, of course, but knowing was much different than experiencing. She’d prayed for his entire life that the only evil he and his siblings would ever have to fight was that which tried to infiltrate from the inside. And she’d prayed that each of them would fight with all their might.

  There was much to lose in telling her story now, and yet . . . perhaps something to gain as well. Hermann had been gone for fourteen years, and she’d read in the papers that Ernst Schmid had died in Berlin a decade after the war, no children surviving him. He was one of many Nazis who’d never gone to trial, cloaking himself as a victim of the past regime.

  Only Hermann knew what Ernst had done to her; she’d told him when he proposed marriage long ago, and he had kept her secret, raising Sigmund as his son. He’d also helped her search for Marta.

  She dropped the handkerchief into her lap, remembering the baby she’d held to her chest as they traversed the Vienna streets, kissing her cheeks before she transferred her into Klara Dornbach’s care.

  Sometimes her arms ached for the violin, but they ached even more for her sister.

  After the war and then the years of zoned occupation, she and Hermann had traveled to Paris, searching for Klara and Marta in the ruins of war, but they never found either of them. Her sweet sister, she feared, had suffered as Annika had, while Luzia bore only a single scar on her leg.

  Her family was all gone, exterminated by evil, and the guilt of it almost crushed her. But God had kept her on this earth for another season. And with Hermann’s help, she decided that she would honor her parents and sister by living, that she would continue Annika’s legacy by serving God and her husband and children.

  And Max Dornbach—she didn’t know what happened to him. Near the end of his life, Hermann told her that he’d sent Max away before they married, afraid that the man’s impulsiveness would betray them. He had other motives besides his fear—Luzi knew that—but he had protected her for a lifetime, harbored the secret about her and her child.

  She’d prayed for years that God had kept Max on this earth for another season as well.

  Sigmund stepped back into the room, his cell phone in hand. He’d turn seventy-nine in August, and unlike his biological father, he had grown into a man of character, a man who wanted to protect those in his care like the father who’d stepped in to raise him. He’d become a doctor, like his grandfather, but he always called a female colleague when it came to his mother’s medical care.

  “Liselotte just called,” he said, sitting on the arm of the chair beside her.

  “Did she say that I’m done?”

  “She said your body is in perfect working order. The fainting was a fluke.”

  “My body is far from perfect order.”

  “You’re made of steel, Mama.”

  She reached out, took his hand. “I want you to call Callie and her friend.”

  He studied her for a moment. “Jonas said they came to the house on Saturday. They were searching for treasure.”

  “I don’t know about their treasure; please tell them that.”

  “Of course.”

  “But I want to apologize for my . . . unusual departure.”

  “An apology isn’t necessary.”

  “They can come for brunch tomorrow,” she said, her mind made up. “But first . . .”

  “What is it?”

  “Before they come, I have a story to tell you.”

  CHAPTER 41

  We find a shallow cove to the north of Hallstatt, pedaling our rental boat to the place our innkeeper recommended we swim. A stream runs into the lake here, icy water pouring down from the mountains, smoothing out the bed of rocks for a respite in the summer’s heat.

  I dip my toes into the creek and then recline on the backseat of the pedal boat, the fractured rays of sun trickling down through the leaves as Ella and Josh splash in the water. Birds sing in the forest, and as Ella and Josh wander upstream, jumping from stone to stone, I enjoy the rise and fall of the birdsong, a gentle current like the one that rocks the boat.

  I miss my family, but something about this place breathes a gentle contentment inside of me. Peace. I don’t miss being home, not like I thought I would. Perhaps it’s because of Ella and her dad. I’m away and yet I’ve found a bit of home here with the two of them.

  After our visit to the cemetery yesterday, Josh helped Sigmund Stadler carry his mother down the steps and to the office of a doctor in Hallstatt. Sigmund texted Josh last night to say his mother was awake again, but we haven’t heard anything else. So we wait and I worry about this elderly woman who climbed all those steps to care for the graves of her mother and the woman she called a friend.

  Dozens of questions continue whirling through my head as I rest in the warmth this afternoon. I want to ask Annika about the listings in her book, about the photograph of Max, about what has happened in these decades since the war. And most of all, I want to ask her about Luzia Weiss.

  The story from her Bambi book flutters into my mind, the journey of a deer who longed to be with others and yet learned as a young fawn that to survive, he must live in fear. And that he must spend most of his time alone so no one would hurt him, including Fali
ne.

  What a sad life, I’m starting to think, to live alone because you’re afraid.

  Because I’m afraid.

  I want to enjoy the stories of others, but I don’t want to live solely in their pages any longer. I want to embrace my future, my own story, without fear.

  Last night after Josh and Ella settled into their room, I wrote the last paragraphs of my blog about Felix Salten. It seemed fitting to finish the post here in the country he once loved, eighty years after he ran away.

  Abstand is a German term that means building an intentional space between an individual and the world around him. In order to protect his life, Felix Salten had to lay a brick wall between himself and the country he loved. He never returned to Austria. Like the roe deer he created on paper, Salten spent his final years roaming until his death on October 8, 1945, months after the Soviet Army liberated Vienna from the Nazis.

  Perhaps Salten described his journey best in one of his last books—Bambi’s Children:

  One-Eye spoke in his oiliest tones. “You’re very famous, now. The whole forest speaks of you as though you were already a legend. I should be honored that you speak to me at all.”

  “If it’s an honor,” Bambi told him, “it’s very unwillingly bestowed. What I did, I did because I had to.”

  “It was heroic of you,” said One-Eye with sly flattery.

  Bambi shook his head. “Is it heroic to do what necessity demands?” He wheeled and disappeared.

  Necessity demanded that Salten disappear from Austria, but he left behind a treasure trove of stories for children and their parents to remember what might be lost today if we don’t stand against the evil in our midst.

  I reach for my phone and snap a selfie. Me, Calisandra Randall, relaxing in a pedal boat. I text it to Brie, knowing she might go into shock when she sees it.

  Ella squeals on my right. Josh has lifted her up, cradling her under her arms as her legs dangle in the water, swinging her from side to side. This is what fathers are supposed to do, I think. Make their children laugh, secure in their arms.

  The jet lag weighs down my eyes, and I doze before being awakened by someone pouring cold water over my feet. Ella—laughing as she scoops up the water in her hands, reviving me.

  When I look over at Josh, he shrugs. “I couldn’t stop her.”

  “Because she’s bigger than you?”

  “Her willpower is certainly stronger.”

  Ella grabs a stick and throws it into the water, watching the current steal it.

  “Go away,” I murmur to Josh, closing my eyes again.

  “Oh no,” he says, climbing into one of the bucket seats up front. “No more sleeping, or you’ll be up all night.”

  And it occurs to me that I was sleeping, soundly, on a plastic bench seat, surrounded by noise. The time difference has me a bit upside down, but upside down never improved my sleep before. Josh and Ella—they aren’t wearing me out like most people do. Instead, I am utterly content when I’m with them.

  For this brief moment, a chapter in the greater story, I feel as if I’m part of their little family.

  “I’m used to staying up all night,” I say.

  Josh stretches out on the front seat, extending his long legs and water sandals to the opposite side of the boat. “Mind if I join you?”

  I push up to my elbows. “Are you giving me a choice?”

  “Not really.” He pulls his ball cap over his eyes and sunglasses.

  “If I don’t get to sleep, then neither do you.”

  “I’m just resting my eyes.” He doesn’t rest them for long, though. I watch him open the storage compartment between the seats and check his phone.

  “Nothing yet?”

  “No. I keep hoping Sigmund will call with another update.”

  “I didn’t mean to scare her.”

  “I can only imagine she’s spent a lifetime being afraid.”

  It’s a common bond between us, this fear.

  “After the war,” he says, “about twelve thousand Nazis were detained near here at a place called Camp Orr. They created a group called the Spider to resurrect the Austrian Nazi Party and annex Austria back into Germany.”

  I shiver at this thought. “Thank God they didn’t succeed.”

  “Many people here thought the Nazis would take over their country again one day. After what they lived through, it must have been a terrifying thought.”

  “The fear didn’t go away,” I say. “Perhaps it never went away for Annika.”

  Josh glances toward Ella; she is quite content now building a fortress with stones and leaves on the riverbank. “‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.’”

  I peek up over his shoulder to see if he’s reading the verse from his phone, but the phone’s no longer in his hand. “You’ve memorized it?”

  “I clung to it for years.”

  When I close my eyes again, it’s not to sleep. It’s a wall of sorts, blocking him out, and yet I see the picture of his wife in my mind, the photograph he had hanging in his office. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for him to watch her suffer and not to be able to take away her pain.

  “How did you do that?” I ask, opening my eyes slowly.

  He turns toward me now, propping his feet up on the bucket seat. “What?”

  “How did you let Grace go?”

  “She’ll never be completely gone, not from my heart at least, but she’s with her Father now, and I know . . .” His voice cracks, confidence melting in his love. “I know that He’s taking good care of her.”

  God as a father is not the picture that I want to see. At least not as my father. But a father like Josh . . . I can see God in him. In men like Ethan and others at church who care well for their children.

  “I’m sorry that your dad didn’t love you like he should have, Callie.”

  “No apology necessary.”

  “That’s not how God meant for it to be.”

  I rub away the knot trying to worm its way into my left shoulder. “It seems that so much in our world is not what God meant for it to be.”

  “I think we can cling to the goodness we see in the world. To the beauty in these lakes and the laughter of those kids who come every Saturday to hear your stories.”

  Goodness, the heart and soul of a father. I like that picture, knowing God’s character isn’t reflected in every dad of this world.

  Ella throws a stone into the stream and giggles when it hits the water.

  “Does she remind you of your wife?” I ask quietly so Ella doesn’t hear.

  “In her laughter and her grand outpouring of love, but Ella is branching out with graceful new limbs of her own. She seems unbreakable, but I’m afraid I’ll say something to hurt her. . . .”

  “What would Grace have told you?”

  He thinks for a moment. “To be gentle.”

  “Gentle and strong,” I say.

  When he smiles at me, a strange feeling creeps into my heart. A tectonic shift. Josh and I—I think we might make a good team.

  “I’m hungry,” Ella calls from the bank.

  Josh is still smiling when he offers me his hand. “Should we break out the sandwiches?”

  He helps me climb over the edge of the boat, and we sit on a log by the shore. Leaves rustle around us, and someone paddles a canoe around our boat, heading upstream. When Josh’s phone rings, he pulls it out of his pocket and wanders toward the trees, just far enough away that we can’t hear the conversation while Ella and I unwrap the brown paper from our sandwiches and begin eating the turkey and cheddar cheese on sourdough bread.

  “I like it here.” Ella wipes mustard off her face with the back of her hand.

  “Me too.”

  “My mom wouldn’t let Dad dive in this lake.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  She shrugs. “I hear things.”

  “I bet you have amazing e
ars.”

  She tugs on one of her earlobes. “Like a moth.”

  “I didn’t know moths had such good hearing.”

  Josh puts one leg over the log as he joins us. “Did you hear what I just said?”

  Ella scrunches up her nose. “I wasn’t listening to you.”

  He looks at me. “That was Sigmund.”

  “Is Annika okay?”

  He nods. “The doctor said her body is in good working order, though apparently Annika said that no ninety-seven-year-old’s body works all that well.”

  I smile. “It sounds like she is better.”

  “Sigmund asked us to come to the castle for brunch tomorrow. His mother would like to hear your story and share a bit of hers, though she doesn’t want to talk about lost treasure from the war.”

  “That puts a damper on your search.”

  “On our search,” he says. “But I want to learn about Luzia too.”

  Ella balls up the brown paper that was wrapped around her sandwich. “C’mon, Dad!” she says, tugging on his hand.

  When he stands up, she rushes into the water again, but before he follows her, he offers his hand to me as well. “Come play with us.”

  I hesitate, looking down at his offering, a palm spread open. I could sit here and mull over my thoughts alone, or I could join them in their laughter.

  “Please, Callie.”

  Ella hops back up to the shore. “Team Nemeth!” she exclaims, a smile lighting her face.

  “Team Nemeth,” I say before taking Josh’s hand.

  The three of us splash and laugh, throw twigs and rocks. And as we play, the world seems to right itself again.

  When Josh knocks on the castle door, the muscles in my neck fold and ripple down my body. I’m not entirely sure why I’m shaking—we are invited guests this time.

  Ella is chattering beside me about glass castles and fairy tales, and I think about what Annika must have been like when she was seven and then a few years after, living on this estate when the Nazis marched into her country. I can’t imagine all that she must have seen.